Document U.S. Pat. No. 5,394,098 describes an example of such a device used for testing optoelectronic components. In this device, the optical source is a laser and the means used for mapping the phase shift of the light beam consist of an interferometer. The medium having electrooptic properties consists of a layer of a suitable polymer covering at least part of the component that it is desired to test.
However, this type of device has the drawback of allowing electric field measurements only on the surface because of the dissociation, inherent in this approach, between firstly the unknown electrooptic medium, which is the target of the measurement and is itself the site of the electric field to be determined (or of the electrooptic distribution to be determined or of a combination of the two) and secondly the artificial electrooptic medium introduced as a means of revealing the field lines emitted by the medium to be probed. Furthermore, the use of this type of device is limited to the detection of electric fields in media that are able to receive treatments of the thin-film deposition type, such as those generally used in the technologies for fabricating optoelectronic components. This type of device cannot be used in particular for detecting electric fields in the volume of biological media.
An object of the present invention is in particular to alleviate these drawbacks.